Power to the people as Samsung is said to be reviewing their decision not to upgrade the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab Android devices to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The company is reportedly doing an about-face, as reported by ajnews in Korea, claiming the company will review the viability of updating those two devices in response to customer outcry.

Samsung is reiterating its concerns of updating both devices with Ice Cream Sandwich, especially with regard to limited memory capacity but was quoted as saying it will investigate alternate methods to try and make the upgrade work. Samsung has yet to comment on the current report.

Keep up your outcry and maybe, just maybe Samsung will find a way to make this work. They’d make for a lot of happy customers in the process.

About David Beren

David is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TmoNews.com. He considers himself a Jedi Knight, capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound and a connoisseur of fine cell phones. He has been involved in the wireless industry since 2003 and has been known to swap out phones far too many times in any given year. Should you wish to contact him, you can do so: david@tmonews.com.

Actually, Samsung has made a launcher available on the market, and it’s pretty cool too! But, TouchWiz isn’t just a launcher. It enhances and replaces components of Android.

For example, TouchWiz is the only user experience that includes hardware-accelerated support for many audio and video codecs, as well as container formats like MKV. I bought a Galaxy S simply because of the codec support and the Super AMOLED screen.

CantItAllBeSimple

TouchWiz along with all the rest are no longer needed and IMO Google should go as far to force all the “Faces” to be optional and thus available on the market for a fee for those that want to use them. For instance if you want HTC Sense on your phone fine HTC will ship the phone with sense on it but if you want stock simply go into the settings and click x bottom that reverts you to stock with a dialog saying you can either reactivate HTC when you decide you’d like to use it again or go into the market where sense is available for use.

They can’t force it, and UXes like TouchWiz and Sense will always be necessary as long as there are deficiencies in the stock experience. If stock Android included the wide variety of hardware accelerated media decoding options that TouchWiz did, then TouchWiz would have one less reason to exist. If stock Android came with a theming engine, Sense UI would have one less reason to exist.

If you want those UXes to disappear, you’ve got to fix the problems they solve in the stock Android experience, first.

Bruce Banner

Since android is Googles os they can force the issue if they choose to do so. If Samsung refused to comply Google could simply withhold future versions of the os from them.

It’ll get Ice Cream Sandwich and the next version of Android after that. I’m sure of that much. Samsung planned ahead when they developed the Galaxy S II. It’s been beefed up enough that it can run Honeycomb, so there’s no reason it can’t run Ice Cream Sandwich and the next version of Android after that.

At the very least, the international model will (GT-i9100). Whether the U.S. variants gets it depends on subscribers inquiring about it to the carriers enough that they see the demand for the update. I don’t see it being a problem for T-Mobile, but AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint will be problematic.

Bruce Banner

Hardware shouldn’t be an issue since Google already said that if a device can run gingerbread it should be able to run ics. Samsung just has alot of hot air up their asses.

Except the Galaxy S was a phone designed to run Android 2.1. Google said it for phones designed for Android 2.3. Android 2.3 to Android 3.0 saw a massive increase in the ROM size for the Android OS. It got bigger in Android 4.0 when telephony and other traditional capabilities were added back in. Additionally, Android 4.0 apps are larger than their counterparts for Android 2.x because they have to include resources for multiple resolutions in a single package at times.

The Galaxy S on T-Mobile has 1.5GB of storage for OS and applications combined. The Galaxy S 4G allocated about 500MB for its OS and app partition because Samsung cut back on the amount of internal storage.

It is even more problematic on the Galaxy S for CDMA carriers, which only allocated 300MB for the OS and app storage.

The Galaxy S for AT&T allocated the same amount as T-Mobile, but had twice the number of bloatware apps.

Also, let’s not forget that pre-installed apps get duplicated in the filesystem when you get updates to those apps. That cuts down storage even more. When you think about it, it becomes really easy to see how you can drain away all the internal storage for the OS and apps very quickly.

Anonymous

XDA. Download the ROM.It is free. See how it works. You might not be happy.
Does Microsoft give away new software every time they update windows? No. It is amazing to me that any manufacturer updates OS for free. It costs money to develop the software and the manufacturer wants the phone experience to be satisfying so you don’t hate it. Try putting windows 7 on a Pentium 1GHZ processor with 500M ram and see if it works okay. You put ICS on an old phone you will just have something new to complain about.

Havoktek

That’s what I’m sayin!

Anonymous

that’s the thing. I shouldn’t have to root my phone and waste my time with ROMs. For one thing I’m paying for the phone, for another I want WiFi calling to work

Anonymous

I don’t think your comparison is exactly right…….. Samsung releases phones that in many ways are not finished products. Touchwiz integration is often very poor, lags the phone and causes bug problems. It also makes it difficult to update. They also are quite reluctant to release kernels and drivers and so even if you do go the root and rom route, many phones never see significant development. I would prefer Samsung to release less devices and actually make the ones they release work well. I also think google needs to do the same, rather than release a new version of android every few months, they should get it working right and let the manufacturers catch up.

Jw3

Thank you so much! I have tried to comment/ explain to all of the whiners on here the very same thing, YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR NEW IF NEW IS WHAT YOU WANT! Im telling you, dont waste your time, they just bash you & cry even louder! I have a gsm galaxy nexus & ics has plenty of bugs to iron out any way, they would just cry about that next. Such great articles on this site, but the comments are just about worthless! Tmotech, if you work for T-Mobile let me just say thank you, for your outstanding customer service & support! Way too many “customers” bash you guys all the time, let them try dealing with one of the other major carriers, their customer service is worthless compared to TMO! No one is holding guns to their heads making them stay on TMO, if they arent happy then let them go somewhere else for twice the price & half the service! I have been with TMO for 9yrs, you guys changed the whole game & gave ppl REAL service in order to become a major competitor, & you have succeeded at it! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Dont bother trying to explain logic to these clowns!

D4niel

Since the Vibrant still doesn’t have Gingerbread, this seems like slight of hand.

Anonymous

Even if they decide to put ics on the original, US won’t get. Its been almost a year and every device don’t have gingerbread. US cell carriers are too greedy to update old devices. Also, they focusing on 4g and ignoring 3g now according to a tmobile representative I talked too.

Anonymous

3G is 4G. They are the same network. What makes it 4G is HSUPA added to HSDPA+ 14.4 If a site has HSUPA activated then the Phone considers the network 4G. If you want an upgrade then go to XDA and get the ROM. It works great and is easy to install if you follow the directions.

3G is not 4G.
Yes, they’re almost the same network but what makes 4G is not HSUPA added to HSDPA+ because “HSDPA+” don’t even exist.

4G (in T-mobile) is HSPA+ or Evolved HSPA.
That provides an evolution of High Speed Packet Access and provides data rates up to 84 Mbit/s to the mobile device and 22 Mbit/s from the mobile device.

Anonymous

I am an Field engineer for T-Mobile. They are the same network. I know, I helped install and integrate it. I shouldn’t have said what “Makes” it 4G. that was badly put. I was saying what your phone thinks is 4G. if you are in an area that has 3G with HSUPA turned on your “4G” phone translates that to put a 4G at the top of your phone instead of 3G. Even if there is no Ethernet back-haul.

We have brought up 3G Cell sites with just a couple of T-1s until the fiber optic cable is delivered to give people 3G/4G coverage because 3G/4G with a couple of T-1’s is still better than EDGE. It is not a secret but it is something that the standard consumer does not know. That is why sometimes when it says 4G you speed is still only a couple Mbps.Sorry to pull back the curtain but it is what it is.

Tony Allen

I think Samsung should do with the original Galaxy S phones what HTC did with the original Desire, de-bloat it, and release a ROM without their extra BS so the customers will be happy, because isn’t that what matters?

Well, I’d like to have my text messaging and picture messaging features, thank you very much! I don’t consider that bloat! (The Gingerbread update for the Desire removed support for text and picture messaging)

Anonymous

Wait, they removed the ability to send SMS and MMS instead of uninstalling HTC and carrier bloatware? Ohh! Come on!

There’s no carrier bloatware either. Just a stripped down version of HTC Sense. It also bricks the American CDMA variants because there’s no CDMA radio packaged in the manual update.

Anonymous

Thank you for being the voice of reason. I have a galaxy s. I dont care if it has touch wiz. I hate asl the bloatware. Samsung needs to drop both. I dont wasnt this garbage cluttering up my phone and I shouldn’t have to root a phone to make it usable. I would love this phone with vanilla ics. But how are we dosed to let samsung know this? They should already know…

Anonymous

At least provide a watered down version that has a lot of the new features…

Then regular customers would complain that they bought a phone with Touchwiz and like it very much and they shouldn’t remove features. Remember not everyone is a techy and would much rather have Touchwiz on Gingerbread then Ice Cream Sandwich without it.

Bruce Banner

Since you probably have never experienced ice cream sandwich your opinion doesn’t carry much weight.

Anonymous

Ouch!
That hurts. xD!

Frigadroid

I’ve never experienced an update from samsung that worked. So I’m not holding my breath, that just because they say they will “review” an update I wouldn’t expect much will happen.

Some people don’t like change. They want the same device they bought. If you throw a bunch of new fancy things at them they will be thrown off and become angry customers. Learning your phone again after having it for a year can cause problems for some people that just want (as I quote Apple here) “it to work”.
I can’t wait for ICS and would love a barebones AOSP version of it vs the Touchwiz overlay but I am not who I’m talking about. I’m talking about your tech less breather-in who couldn’t tell you the difference between a capacative display and a resistive one. This what makes the iPhone so popular. The interface has not change in years. There is a reason for that.

Tito!

This better include my Sidekick 4G -.-

kir

your name is tito and you have a sidekick 4g. i’m sorry

Tito!

Your name is kir…. no, I’m sorry. :)

Anonymous

:) Your sidekick4g is never even going to get gingerbread, let alone ICS.

kkkk

sorry off topic, i am geting lots of unwanted spam texts , it used to be phone calls but ever since I BLACKLISTED it, i am now getting so many unwanted text from this number. How do I block unwanted TEXT message on my tmobile galaxy s2?

Philly8816

Go in the market nd downoad webroot

kkkk

webroot is anti spyware software. how does that block spam texts?
this phone already seems to have built in software for viruses and spywares. i see it saying scanned and no issues found

Philly8816

Go to identity nd privacy u can block unknown numbers or put a number to be blocked nd it will stop calls nd SMS nd msm from it

By the way…check your apps for rouge communication privileges, remove the blackmarket stuff, put Lookout app on that bad boy, rinse…….repeat. I can go into more depth but that would be for power users that have root.

Philly8816

All they need to do is work with the Dev community on this cuz I have a fascinate and I’m running 4.0.1 beautifully ..

Havoktek

Well, well……….I look at it like this, if a dev can do it without Samsung support, imagine what a Samsung programmer can do with the full force of the corporate lab behind them..Why let the community show them up? This isn’t about specs or the ability….It’s about the sales and marketing divisions being able to post up TMO for some cash to make it available and what the return would be in selling more devices…If they upgrade the lesser models, why would people want an upgrade?
Apple…hate them as much as I do….got that business model down pat….check and mate…

Guest

Really thats what you took from what he said…didn’t you catch the lack of memory..lag over time issues..

Havoktek

Don’t underestimate the knowledge of what the Company knows as opposed to what you think you know. Being in the IT industry for some time now has taught me that when you have a development cycle/plan…you hope to forsee future issues and try to reasonably predict problems that may occur downstream.
You have a choice of developing a contingency plan now or pay later. A DR plan if you will. Now all theses factors are based on the bottom line as in financial backing to achieve these goals.What I took from this is that Samsung may have had prior knowledge of ICS capabilities and or device limitation….AND may have developed a contingency plan for it…..to work or not. That decision to move forward is balanced between gains and losses in achieving this goal. If you spend more to upgrade a system that is reasonably not top tier and or will depreciate in quicktime, you can and will loose time and money in that effort as opposed to easily making money and saving as well with newer devices.Excuse me for looking behind the scenes my man…

Keithvstevens

Lack of memory? Lol… other devices with the same exact hardware can run ICS… and if it was just that then how are they gonna change it and Magically make it work through a oTA update? I will tell you why.. because they could do it the whole time. You think there gonna get rid of touch wiz to fit it? not… There gonna remove the space taken up by the smoke they just blew up our A**

The issue seems to be one of size, and how Samsung chose to utilize memory storage on the Galaxy S. We already have two stable betas of ICS running on the Vibrant. Though the install footprint of AOSP ICS is a tad larger than Gingerbread, the /data partition storage requirements seem to be greater. Add in Touchwiz bloat and carrier bloat and the amount of space available on the phones internal movi-nand storage does become an issue. Solving it would require Samsung to significantly deviate from how AOSP deals with partition mounts and filesystems. Granted, these sorts of issues (and how they led to the Galaxy S lines dreaded increasing lag-over-time issues due to slow data read-write) have been worked through by the dev community ages ago on existing roms through the use of custom kernel’s and deviations from the standard filesystem.

Bottom line for Samsung is that they would have to solve these issues, and do so in a significantly different way than they would need to bother with for the SII and newer devices.

The better solution, in my view, would be for Samsung to stop fragmenting the Galaxy S by simply releasing kernel source (and negotiate to release some of the driver source) across all devices in a timely and fair way and let the dev community pick up the ball. They have and will pick up the ball regardless, but it’d be a win/win for Samsung to simply help the dev community in this tiny way, so that future upgrades can occur regardless of what Samsung wants to support.

There are SIGNIFICANT differences in the Galaxy S line, despite most of them looking nearly the same. Take for instance the T-Mobile Vibrant. It utilizes a very unique radio, and the phone’s RIL does not work in a way remotely similar to most other Galaxy S Variants.

This is why we have Gingerbread unofficially (T-Mobile decided to orphan this device as the only Galaxy S to not receive Gingerbread) and ICS unofficially, but both without functioning E911 service. It is a SERIOUS safety concern which resulted in the Cyanogen mod team dropping support for the device.

Samsung could simply release the RIL framework documentation and this problem would be solved by other people….FOR FREE…in a week. And there’s little to stop Samsung from utilizing such free expertise to solve such a tiny problem. Admittedly the number of people who have older phones who give a rats about a new OS is vanishingly small, but that’s not the argument.

Android platform ODM’s and OEM’s have a tremendous opportunity to make tiny concerted efforts to allow the natural crowdsourcing that is already taking place pay off for them in spades. They just have to realize this.

30014

Well Scott your comments have made the most sense on this entire post. Since I’m rocking the g2 I don’t have a horse in the samsung race, and hopefully htc and t-mobile won’t put us g2 users through this debacle.

LOL! well I guess Samsung remembered they sold like 40 million of this devices to sweep it under the rug.

Surfcity_dad

I wonder what the reaction would be if they offered ICS to Galaxy S owners for $100. I would certainly go for it for my Vibrant.

Bkidko

If it does make it, it will be christmas time next year. You may be the only person on the planet that would agree to such a deal. You will be able to buy a galaxy s2 with ICS for $100 before the vibrant gets ICS.

mrsbelpit

Unfortunately, this means jack shit for the Vibrant. No GB in sight, why would anyone think we’d get official ICS? Nice way to treat the flagship phone, Sammy/TMo.

Jeepnfun

That just might make up for the rising complaints about the Sidekick 4g. Samsung and t-mobile need to figure that one out too.

Anonymous

+1 for that. The sidekick4g is the worst device I have ever owned and that is saying something since I also had the Behold II. I am sensing a pattern here…. what could it be….. oh yes, samsung…..

Flash99

It’s business – Samsung doesn’t want to update their phones, they want you to get a new one. Making Android available to all manufacturers is a good and bad thing – it’s great that anyone can make an Android phone but these companies, and Samsung in particular, don’t seem to be very prepared to offer regular software updates. My Vibrant had incredible specs when I got it and I was promised that, unlike the G1 and The Behold, I would get updates regularly. And what did I get? One update that only came because Vibrant owners protested.

I will NEVER get another Samsung phone. If I get another Android phone it will be something from HTC as they seem to be the only ones who try to keep their phones updated. More likely I will be switching to an iPhone and moving over to Sprint. There’s a lot I like about Android over the iOS but the bottom line is iPhones get regular updates as long as the hardware can handle them. It seems you have to buy a Nexus phone to get that out of Android and unless the Galaxy Nexus comes to T-Mobile soon, I’m done.

They need to adopt a policy of upgrading their phones, no matter what, for at least two years post-release.

Frigadroid

Or now would be a dang good time for tmobile to offer one year contracts with reasonable discounts on the phones. My vibrant is getting harder to browse with this outdated software, its like an old pc with windows 2k :c(

Davenycept

I agree ..my vibrant still looks sexy but just doesn’t have the horsepower it once seemed it had before.. And didn’t samsung say it was goof to upgrade its devices every six months..

Anonymous

Will never buy another Samsung phone….or any Samsung product for that matter. They screwed me on my Behold and they will screw me again on my Galaxy S 4G…..never again!

Justin_plecko

I would be happy if a day went by that I didn’t have to take the battery out of my Vibrant because it froze up. I guess the 3rd time isn’t the charm in my case.

Anonymous

You vibrant sounds just like my wife’s Sidekick4g. 2 battery pulls a day makes your sanity go away…… Ain’t touchwiz grand. Almost makes me long for my Shamesung Behold II, no wait that didn’t get an upgrade either. Never mind.

I had the same issue with the Vibrant however i found that running a factory reset, it cleaned it up like new. The only problem with this is having to download apps again and setting up accounts. It’s definitely not a good solution to this issue, but it does work. It is my belief that i either had a) too many apps on my phone or b) a few of those apps were slowing it down.

I have started to install apps at a much slower pace to see if there are certain ones that cause the general laggyness or freezing.

Tacotaco

Drop Touchwiz from the upgrade and it will work. TeamHacksung’s ICS port is proof

And their port has no emergency calling services. No one is happy about that.

Bkidko

Dear Samsung,

KEEP YOUR EFFING MOUTH SHUT FOR ONCE!

I don’t think that anyone seriously considered the possibility of ICS on the Vibrant until Samsung opened their lying mouth. Time and time again they make semi promises that they are not going to keep. Last week’s announcement was absolutely not necessary. It seems like they are trying to irritate their customers proactively.

You got the Nexus and now Android is ruined. What a pathetic spectacle that was.

Google, you let a severely wounded iphone off the hook. ICS was announced almost 3 months ago and hardly anyone in the U.S. is aware of it to this day. This update stuff is going to be the last nail in your coffin. Really surprising stuff from such a forward thinking company.

Keithvstevens

Ya… SO it was “Technically” no t feasible… or that was the excuse they had. Due to Hardware limitations. Now that people are pissed all of a sudden they will somehow “Find a way” Please…. they could do it the whole time they just got caught with there pants down pissing on there so called old customers that they don’t give a shit about.

MikeY

People should understand why companies attempt to exclude certain devices from getting “special” and important upgrades. It’s actually a gimmick in an attempt to make consumers buy the new things. Remember, hardware is nothing without the correct software. iPhone is not selling like hot potatoes because it has great hardware, it’s that it’s software is preferred by many. Withholding an update like ICS from their tablets, is an attempt to make sure that you try and buy the new tablet whether it be the 7.7, 10.1, or 8.9. Galaxy S/4G is the same things, except you are either forced to buy the Nexus Galaxy, or Galaxy S II.
Remember, iPhone pulled the same things with their siri application. They claimed that iPhone 4 or 3GS can’t handle it. Samsung being the company which mimics many thing Apple does, tried to do the same thing.

Bkidko

Three months after its releasethe only way to experience ICS (other than a portion of lucky nexus s owners) is to be on Verizon’s network and have resisted the huge amount of droid razr advertising while being in the dark about the galaxy nexus.
It will be some time before the GS2 gets ICS in the states, so you really don’t have many options. Just how exclusive do they want this to be? To the point that most people can’t buy it even if they wanted to? Google is foing backwards, while Apple is moving forward.

Samsung’s shitty equipment and shitty software update support has gotten me to the point that I will walk, happily from android devices as well. iPhone here I come. At least there are no variations of the operating system on diff devices. Yes, android is good, but it will continue to be outpaced by iPhone

android guy

Really iPhone gets half of its shit from stilling from android.

Havoktek

+1 Ditto…..

Lawrence of Arabia

The truth is that after trying for 3 days ICS, I went back to CM7, much more faster and with more features…. and ICS is officially released for my NS.

Enoel69

Google should do same and update the Nexus one…saw the HTC Desire a device with similar specs as the N1 running ICS just fine. If Google can update the Nexus S another device with abt the same specs as the N1, they should just go ahead and update it as well.

Anonymous

Over the last few days I used a ICS ROM “Passion v8” and I was very pleased with it. Sure the amount of memory the ROM used was a bit much but it ran. It was only after I restored all my apps that the ROM started to become sluggish.

I am very happy that they are thinking about this but disappointed because I know already that they will most likely only apply the update to the 4G model.

i run ICS passion v8 and it’s just fine. the problem with lag and what not isn’t due to the hardware not being able to support it. the problems come from the fact we do not have source for vibrants, everything we have past official 2.2 is hacked shit from the i9000 phones.

I have Bonix-V NetGen V2 ROM on my phone and it runs great! No lag at all. They can keep their ICS, I’m not taking any more chances that might get that dreaded lag back. I’ll believe the upgrade when I see the upgrade. Until then, it’s just more of Samsung’s blabbering to save face.

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